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By KATHRYN HUME

Between longtime members of a department and the newest assistant professors lies a gulf of incomprehension. Assistant professors cannot understand why their helpfully meant suggestions in department meetings seem not to be heard and are never voted into action. Senior members cannot understand how bright candidates for tenure could be so stupid. Both sides have a point.

The problem lies in the language that divides these two tribes, a version of English used to express departmental matters in public. Call it "departmentese."

Many young and some not-so-young "departmentals" never learn it properly, condemning themselves to talking slowly and loudly in their original tongue, wondering why no one seems to understand. The newly minted assistant professor might, then, profitably study this primer in departmentese before speaking up at the next department meeting.

Every language possesses cognitive blank spots. Latin has no one-word way of saying Yes or No, while Anglo-Saxon does not distinguish among pale gray, green, and yellow, calling them all fallow. Similarly, certain concepts cannot be expressed in departmentese. The chief of these is self-interest. In his mother tongue, a young faculty member can say, "If you do away with the Medieval requirement, my graduate seminar won't make minimum enrollment, I'll have no students, and because I really don't know anything about literature written after 1485, I'll be forced to teach freshman composition." Departmentese cannot express that sentiment.

In that stately language, he must instead say, "No one can be considered educated who does not know Chaucer, and we would disgrace the department if we lowered our standards this way." Changing the nature of the curriculum, the distribution requirements, and the comprehensive exams must all be negotiated without reference to the self-interest of people whose courses may fail for lack of registration.

Many a department meeting consists entirely of dancing around the edge of this hole in the language. When trying to see why a department is divided over what seems like an obvious improvement, the assistant professor should ask herself who gains and who loses. The proposer sincerely thinks that Proposition X would improve the comprehensive exams but rarely expects to give up something significant through the change. Those who oppose the proposal expect to be hurt by it, whatever high moral claims or student interests they invoke to justify their opposition.

Another linguistic blank concerns the shortcomings of colleagues. They may publish nothing, hold few office hours, put no effort into grading papers, and feud unremittingly, but most department cultures do not permit anyone to point this out in meetings. When a department decides its hiring priorities, watch the graceful footwork as skilled departmentals ease around this linguistic gap.

If the Americanists push to hire someone with expertise in the first half of the 20th century, they cannot say, "We have three people in that field already, but they've published nothing for 15 years, their teaching is terrible, and two of them won't speak to each other." Instead, the suave departmental proclaims, "We need someone who will bring us national recognition in this field because this is already a strong area, and a dynamic hire will transform us into a magnet program."

Yes, the neophyte may feel that devoting a senior hire to a field with three turkeys is throwing good money after bad and may wonder whether a really stellar scholar would wish to join this unsavory flock unless fleeing a sexual-harassment charge at home. Departmentese, however, has no words with which to express these misgivings.

When a topic falls afoul of both self-interest and collegial shortcomings, the two cognitive holes merge into a black hole, swallowing all discussion that approaches either topic. That happens, for instance, when the dean demands that the department raise its standards for tenure or when a main campus makes that demand on a branch campus. Many who now have tenure would not qualify by the new standards but cannot admit that to themselves, let alone to others. Even those who have been prolific usually hesitate to say aloud in a meeting that tenured colleagues A, B, and C should be disqualified from voting on tenure because they would not meet the new standards. The black hole swallows discussion, and assistant professors may be given conflicting information because parts of the department are pretending that nothing has changed.

The young professor who aspires to be listened to must learn institutionally effective ways of approaching problems. Let us return to the original problem: The neophyte says something in a department meeting, and after a hiccup of silence, the discussion resumes as if nothing had been said. Most universities operate in a manner reminiscent of both the Pentagon and the Catholic Church. Few members of those establishments expect the draftees to decide whom to fight, or the pope to take direction from the parishioners, and neither draftees nor parishioners would find that demands for such powers would win immediate welcome.

The academic equivalent is the assistant professor who proposes, for example, a concentration in media and cultural studies to be built out of thin air in a traditional literature department or who wants the department to give far more weight to teaching in its tenure procedure.

Very often, the assistant professor argues for something that is too clearly self-interested, thereby damaging the self-interest of others. More seminars in cultural studies mean fewer for historical areas. Reduce the publication requirement to accommodate more dedicated teaching (with computerized bells and whistles), and the department and college would both lose in the benchmarking studies of publication that determine everybody's raise and the unit's standing in the university. The neophyte has no idea what the broader effects of such a change might be or indeed that such effects exist.

Or consider the techno-literate assistant professor who sincerely believes that all historical courses would be more effective if augmented by Web sites (created by faculty members) loaded with art, readings, and music of the period. The older professors are unlikely to know how to produce such a thing and probably feel no need for it, having never experienced it. Those who do not greet the idea with cries of joy are thinking about the time it would take to learn to create what they consider a dubious benefit at best.

But why the silence? The assistant professor is sincere, idealistic, and devoted to student interests, but proposing something that only she knows how to do is self-interested. She loses no time in learning the skill and might gain prestige from leading the department in new directions. Others would lose months of working time that could be spent writing a couple of major articles, for which they anticipate real rewards.

The department's inability to "hear" such suggestions relates to the lack of language for self-interest and the issue of collegial incompetence. That assistant professor can indeed advance her vision for the department but must work incrementally. She should create her Web site and demonstrate it to all who express interest. She should encourage and help friends to create similar sites. Finally, in return for a course reduction, she could offer to teach those now convinced of the worth of Web sites how to build one, and she would gain that desired prestige in the long run. That approach could work and would do her no political damage; trying to make Web sites into policy at a department meeting makes her seem variously impractical, unreasonable, or an irritating nuisance.

Most departmental issues affect individual self-interests, and assistant professors must learn to recognize the self-interested kernel in their own suggestions as well as the self-interest they can see all too easily in others. They must work with the interests of others as much as possible and be prepared to compromise. Those at the intellectual and political extremes of the department tend to make demands that violate departmentese's boundaries of self-interest and collegial criticism. Those whose positions lie to one side of the middle but do not come across as extreme have some chance of leading the department a few steps in their preferred direction. A year or two later, the department may be ready to take another step in that same direction.

A major shift in department policy may well take a decade, and it will come step by compromised step, so that self-interests can adjust. Assistant professors who understand the cognitive blanks in departmentese quickly become audible in department meetings. Those who do not doom themselves to sickening frustration.

Kathryn Hume is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at University Park and the author of American Dream, American Nightmare: Fiction Since 1960 (University of Illinois Press, 2000).

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Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 49, Issue 21, Page B5

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